Brilliant as a meteor Hen. Pearce shot across the pugilistic horizon, as quickly to fall extinguished. When Jem Belcher had reached the zenith of his fame, he cast his eyes toward Bristol for a successor, and the early reputation of Pearce pointed him out as a likely holder of the belt of championship on behalf of his own native city. We shall not here dilate on the fistic capabilities of Pearce, convinced that a simple record of his deeds will far outweigh pompous panegyric and fulsome laudation. Pearce was another among the many scientific sons of boxing Bristol, and among the many ring recruits which that ancient city furnished to the metropolitan arena must ever hold a distinguished place. The year of Pearce’s birth was 1777, and after serving his apprenticeship duly to the age of twenty-one, to a tradesman in Bristol, some of the cognoscenti were attracted by his remarkable skill in sparring, and in boxing matches, for which that city and its rival, Bath, were then famous. After Jem Belcher’s accident, in July, 1803, the champion made a flattering overture to the young Bristolian[90] to come to London. Berks, as we have already observed, now asserted his title to the championship, and Jem soon found Pearce an introduction to that bumptious personage, who was as much a bully as a bruiser, at the well-known rendezvous in St. Martin’s Street, Leicester-square. Belcher, as might be expected, after himself testing Pearce’s qualifications, readily backed his townsman, and their first serious rencontre is thus told in “Pancratia,” pp. 182 et seq.:—